Bills Posts

With myself. We got back from the camera club quite late (I’ll write about the club tonight) we were both tired and pretty much went straight to bed. I read my Queen Elizabeth I book (she’s just been given Mary’s death warrant, it sits on her desk unsigned) for 15 to 20 minutes, turned over and went to sleep really quite quickly.

I slept through until just after 5, I decided not to go for a walk instead we would get up early and give the house a quick going over ready for Elayne’s WI event tomorrow.

I picked up my iPad, as I usually do and when I’d finished looking at the news did a quick review of what’s on at the Tate Modern. There are two exhibitions I’d like to see; Technology and Art before The Internet and photographing Britain in the 1980’s. I’m seriously considering getting membership.

It was roughly around then I realised what it was that has annoyed me. I hadn’t done a blog entry the previous night (so you’ll get two today). The day count then, is reset to zero, and starts again. Really, really annoying.

I managed to get up and go for a walk this morning. I was rewarded when I arrived at the waterfront just in time to see the Spirit of Adventure, a very graceful 58,000 ton ship was gliding in very gently. Lovely to see.

I paused for a couple of minutes to watch the ship and then move on to the Cockle Ponds, where I was greeted by water so still that it’s difficult to tell whether I’ve cheated with this picture;

I have to confess that I came very close to not getting up, it was so warm in bed, I got up yo give Misty a drink, and decided to stay up. As usual, I’m glad I did.

To be accurate, the title words bear no relationship to each other, One begs a question; Does your cat do this? Sits at the door to the toilet, miaowing at you. You open the door, cat goes in, stands there miaowing until you sit on the toilet, trousers down (excuse the detail, it doesn’t happen otherwise) cat stands with it’s back towards you, tail wrapped round your leg as best as any cat can, miaows for a minute or so, and then walks off? No I don’t know why ether.

I attend two regular radio nets, the Thursday Night Net and the C4FM Confusion Net on a Sunday, using the new radio that Meg bought me for Christmas is a delight, it is so nice and clear. The nets themselves are so good, I’d use the word entertaining but that decries the educational and community spirit that the nets contain.

Just an interesting day.

I had bought a gadget through Amazon, when it turned up, I realised that it wasn’t quite what I wanted. I went onto Amazon and set up the return, which I have to say is very easy, and one aspect of the service that I find quite impressive.

Anyhow, I had to take the gadget to a drop off point, it’s a shop which is close to the waterfront. I took an opportunity to walk in to town, and have a look and see what was going on, just as a side, I walked down the high street doing a talk to the camera, I have to confess it was a bit nerve-wracking, but it was OK.

I did the drop off, all went OK, and then decided to go for a stroll along the waterfront, and head back to Morrison’s. There was a model yacht event, today involved trimarans. There was a bit of a breeze blowing along the pond, it always impresses me is the way these little boats get up a fair turn of speed both with and against the winds.

A flock of geese came wheeling and squawking over the ponds, finally settling on the smaller one, probably 30 – 40 geese, it was a lovely sight.

It’s a picture of a bunch of exhausted pups at the end of the Tuesday evening photo session, they were looking seriously cute.

The weekend is coming up. Not sure what we are going to do yet. We aren’t planning to go far though. Possibly in to town, to have a look at what is going on at the market.

We had KFC tonight. It made a bit of a change, we always order too much, so there’s some for lunch tomorrow.

It’s kind of days because… I didn’t do a speak to the camera challenge yesterday when we were in london. To be honest, I had several opportunities when I could have said to Elayne that I wanted to do some videoing. Particularly when we had stopped next to St Botolph’s church. There was an open space, and I honestly wanted to do some videoing, can’t get much more public than the centre of London, after all. But no, I didn’t.

I think there were two reasons, I wanted to, but felt a little bit embarrassed, but I was also a little bit paranoid, imagining that some thief was waiting around the corner ready to rush out on their bike, to grab my phone out of my hand.

There were a couple of times when we needed directions, and to consult my phone, I would Tuen in to the building and hold it low. It did seem a bit odd, especially as I saw loads of people happily walking around with their phones held in their hand.

Today’s lack of doing a bit to the camera really came about by accident I intended to, but again felt awkward, but i did do some filming, it was mainly me not doing much talking, but trying to work out why my gimbal isn’t working – it would do so for about three minutes, and would then give up. The motor that controlled one of the axis was getting very hot. I think it’s broken.

Back to normal tomorrow.

We went to London today. We arrived at Waterloo, needing to get to Leadenhall Street. Never been there before, it’s near the Bank of England. We took the Waterloo & City line – that’s one I’ve never used before, but it was convenient. Only to stops Waterloo & Bank which means that you pay only at the Bank end. When you get off at back one way back to the surface is by using the travelator, it’s quite a long one. That’s today’s picture.

We went to do the War of the Worlds interactive experience, and it certainly interactive! It was really well done. The actors played their parts very well, and the effects were very good. I jumped in surprise a few times!. From that you’s take that I recommend it, and I most certainly do.

We were quite lucky. We arrived the experience over an hour early, and we thought we would try our luck. They let us in on a session that was starting only three minutes later, which meant we came out around 1400. As we’d had nothing to eat since breakfast at around 0700, we were hungry. We had a brief discussion, both agreed that we just wanted ”pub food”, we ended up at The English Pub, quite near Aldwych.

We took a slow walk back to Bank, taking in the atmosphere of the city. It seemed normal. Caught the train, got to Waterloo just in time to see the 1628 Portsmouth Harbour train pulling out. That was alright though, we had an open return and only had to wait half an hour for the next train.

We arrived home 1900-ish, the end of a lovely day.

No, we haven’t acquired a new pet. Although I think Elayne would quite happily have adopted one tonight. Jim one of the Camera Club members has a spaniel which has given birth to a litter of six of the most beautiful little puppies.

The camera club had arranged for them to be brought in tonight for us to have a photographic session with them. A play area had been set out for them, and they were given the run of the room. It was great fun. Jim was running around cleaning up as they poo’d or pee’d.

Everybody was loving them run and play as phot’s were taken. I took a few, but trying to photograph a very active little dog, that doesn’t want to stay still ia not the easiest thing to do – except towards the end of the session, when they were running out of steam and settling down for a sleep, where the cuteness factor went up several notches.

After the puppies went home, we went through to the bar and had a very pleasant half an hour or so having a chat.

A very pleasant evening.

I really didn’t want to get up this morning, well, it’s not that I didn’t want to get up, I just didn’t want to get out of a nice, warm very comfortable bed, into what felt like a really quite cold morning. But I did want to be up, and go out for a walk.

I bit the bullet and got up. As usual once up and out it was very pleasant and I was glad I’d bothered to get up.

Having said that, apart from a few people on the high street, there really wasn’t much going on. The only ships moving were the Gosport Ferry, the Victoria of Wight and a tug heading out. I didn’t bother to check why a tug might be outbound as I knew I wouldn’t be able to wait for it to come in.

It was a pleasant, if slightly chilled walk.

I apologise for the now corrected typo from yesterdays post. I wanted to write about a couple of things that occurred on my walk home from the ferry yesterday.

I was due to do my talk to the camera thing, day 12 I think it must be (day 14, review of the week is due tomorrow) anyhow, given my reluctance to talk to the camera in public, I did exactly that – I got the phone out, held like I was having a conversation, and just talked to the phone, it was as easy as that – I could have been talking to anybody. I have to say, that I was really quite pleased with myself.

I was coming to the end of my talk and was due to walk past the time memorial at the Morrisons end of the High Street, there was a group of maybe 10 people gathered around very focussed on their mobile phones, but at least one person also had a tablet. I asked a general question; “Is this Pokemon“? They said Yes. I wasn’t really surprised, yet I was. I really thought it had gone out of fashion. But, what we have here is a very dedicated group of people. To the extent that one bloke (I reckon in his mid 40’s – so not a kid) had three phones on a board and was playing all three together – very dedicated.

Anyhow, they are a group who meet regularly, starting at Coffee #1, usually for notified events, they have a WhatsApp group, but I couldn’t join as their admin wasn’t around. I shall make a point of looking for them. I told Elayne about it, she rolled her eyes (understandably) but said go ahead. I used to play a fair bit, only catching the beasties though, I stayed away from the gyms – that’ll have to change I guess.

It had been a good day.